if it hurts
you’re doing it right.

graceful arms, girls.

pointed feet.

plié, plié…
first position, long legs, extend your necks- yes, that’s right.





i just wanna look like a ballerina again.

I wanna hear my stomach collapse
Rumbling like screams echoing in an empty tavern
I want stalactite ribs
And stick-man fingers,
Thighs the size of a child’s wrist and
I don’t care what I have to do
To get it

I am obsessed.
Addicted to falling,
Falling numbers,
Falling deeper into disorder, disrepair,
Falling for a girl named Ana
Who tells me I can have everything that I want
For easy daily payments of pain and despair.

But, it feels oh so good to be hungry.
Aches and pains make me high,
And sure, it’s scary knowing I could die but
At this point…
Maybe I’d be okay with that if I get to live one day
At 100 pounds.

What is wrong with me?

Rivers, eyes, pools of blood, dense and hollow all at once,
Colors shifting like embers, burning like flame, the blue kind,
Deceptively cool in appearance but in truth,
Truth,
The most deadly of anything.

Can’t cry, can’t smile, can’t feel,
Can’t be real,
But can’t be dead because if I were
Maybe it wouldn’t be so ******* cold,
But to hell with the idea that I’m alive,
That’s *******
Just like everything else they said and don’t you *******
DARE
Ask me who “they” are

Because

They are the directors of the last movie that caused me to panic
They are the boy cracking his ******* knuckles in class and overloading my senses
They are the dark and the shadows that I’m scared of
They are the light that I want more than anything and then
They become the tall ******* in second grade who held your books over your head, just out of reach of your chubby little hands

Except the “books” just out of my reach aren’t stories now, they’re lightbulbs
Which is the most boring thing ever to a kid
But when you grow up and the lightbulbs go out and you reach for a replacement and it’s not there
You’re even more scared of the dark than you were when you were 5.
So you do the thing where you lay really still and wait for the sun to come up but hey, surprise surprise,
It never ******* does, and you forget there was ever a time when you weren’t laying still in the dark.
Hell, you forget there was even a sun in the first place.

And yeah, maybe it sounds like I’m making the whole world out to be against me but sometimes
It just feels like it is,
Maybe they didn’t mean to do it but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and
At this point my backpack is full of ******* cement so
I guess I’m to blame too,
Paving my own path to hell which would be poetic if the heat would stop burning
all
my
*******
nerves

away

I've not had a year like this in days.

You wake up beside her every morning,
She draws your curtains and blocks the sun, says,
“Sleep a moment more” and wraps herself
Around your waist, painted red fingernails
Dig into your sides and you suddenly find
You can’t see through the salt in your eyes.

Her tongue tangles with your lashes as she
Licks the salt away, saying,
“Shh, babe, they can’t know I’m here.”
She peppers your face with pecks,
Less like loving caress and more like bites but
To tell her “No,” has proved futile time and time again.

She stands behind you in the mirror, runs her hands
Over your body, leaving ice in the wake of her fingers,
Pinching your hips and thighs while she sighs,
“Oh, my light,
Why don’t you listen to me more?”

She catches your lips with every bite of breakfast,
Saying, “No, dearest, don’t give in,”
Kisses you senseless, but you just can’t tell if you’re euphoric
Or insane.

The taste of chocolate,
A knife in the gut,
It’s all the same to her.
So now you’re bleeding out on the floor,
And you wish that metallic taste really was a blade,
At least to swallow that would bring darkness instead of shame.
“The blood in your mouth has a calorie count,”
So you know it won’t be long until she takes that too.

there is no blood in my veins,
only air.
little cells, little storms,
little words that echo in the cavities that are my chest,
my heart,
my lungs.
my head is not in the clouds,
it is the clouds,
and it rains, it is cold,
it is full of dust and heavy, heavy atmosphere.

any other day I’d hide from the storm
but today I stand with arms outstretched
and head tilted towards the sky,
catching tears that I can’t make
wishing for lighting to strike
to fill my
empty
empty
veins.